The Black Power movement of the 1960s developed out of anger about the way African Americans were treated in the United States. It emphasized black culture, history, pride, community, and rage. ...
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The Black Power movement of the 1960s developed out of anger about the way African Americans were treated in the United States. It emphasized black culture, history, pride, community, and rage. Spokesmen argued that black men were more damaged by racism than black women, that men should be the leaders, head of the household, and dominant. Black women were empowered and thrilled by the Black Power movement, including the Black Panther Party, but many had critiques of its male chauvinism, common to many nationalist movements. Female radical African American activists and Black Arts movement members sometimes did not find the intraracial cross-gender solidarity that they sought and were often disappointed.Less

Hope and Anger: Black Women and Black Power

Winifred Breines

Published in print: 2006-04-27

The Black Power movement of the 1960s developed out of anger about the way African Americans were treated in the United States. It emphasized black culture, history, pride, community, and rage. Spokesmen argued that black men were more damaged by racism than black women, that men should be the leaders, head of the household, and dominant. Black women were empowered and thrilled by the Black Power movement, including the Black Panther Party, but many had critiques of its male chauvinism, common to many nationalist movements. Female radical African American activists and Black Arts movement members sometimes did not find the intraracial cross-gender solidarity that they sought and were often disappointed.

This chapter focuses on abstract painter Howardena Pindell and her controversial Free, White, and 21 (1980), a video art piece in which Pindell—playing all parts—staged a dialogue between ...
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This chapter focuses on abstract painter Howardena Pindell and her controversial Free, White, and 21 (1980), a video art piece in which Pindell—playing all parts—staged a dialogue between reincarnations of herself and a caricature of a white feminist who callously debunks the veracity of her experiences. The chapter interprets the video as a black feminist counterpublic that is not simply about critique, but also racism-as-trauma; furthermore, it detail Pindell’s performative engagements with cross-racial embodiment and avatar-play. Yet, in efforts to contextualize both the video’s content and Pindell’s career, the chapter begins with an examination of the various political and artistic communities Pindell participated in, or was denied access to, in the late 1960s and 1970s. In doing so, the chapter’s aim is to render visible not only the manifold tensions that arose from the merging of art and politics in this period, but more explicitly the difficulties in being a black woman artist excluded from avant-garde circles (both black and white), partly for making abstract work that was deemed not sufficiently “black.” The last part of the chapter discusses Pindell’s vociferous rebuke of “art world racism” through her involvement in PESTS, an anonymous arts organization. It turns to PESTS’s remains—a flyer, poster replicas, and two obscure newsletters—that serve as public engagements with the invisibility, exclusion, and tokenism faced by artists of color.Less

Is This Performance about You? : The Art, Activism, and Black Feminist Critique of Howardena Pindell

Uri McMillan

Published in print: 2012-04-23

This chapter focuses on abstract painter Howardena Pindell and her controversial Free, White, and 21 (1980), a video art piece in which Pindell—playing all parts—staged a dialogue between reincarnations of herself and a caricature of a white feminist who callously debunks the veracity of her experiences. The chapter interprets the video as a black feminist counterpublic that is not simply about critique, but also racism-as-trauma; furthermore, it detail Pindell’s performative engagements with cross-racial embodiment and avatar-play. Yet, in efforts to contextualize both the video’s content and Pindell’s career, the chapter begins with an examination of the various political and artistic communities Pindell participated in, or was denied access to, in the late 1960s and 1970s. In doing so, the chapter’s aim is to render visible not only the manifold tensions that arose from the merging of art and politics in this period, but more explicitly the difficulties in being a black woman artist excluded from avant-garde circles (both black and white), partly for making abstract work that was deemed not sufficiently “black.” The last part of the chapter discusses Pindell’s vociferous rebuke of “art world racism” through her involvement in PESTS, an anonymous arts organization. It turns to PESTS’s remains—a flyer, poster replicas, and two obscure newsletters—that serve as public engagements with the invisibility, exclusion, and tokenism faced by artists of color.

The introduction begins with a brief discussion of Lorraine O’Grady’s Mlle Bourgeoise Noire to discuss the risks and rewards of becoming the subject and object of art. It delineates the three key ...
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The introduction begins with a brief discussion of Lorraine O’Grady’s Mlle Bourgeoise Noire to discuss the risks and rewards of becoming the subject and object of art. It delineates the three key concepts undergirding Embodied Avatars—black performance art, objecthood, and avatar production—and their relationship to the book’s focus on black women performers and artists from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.Less

Introduction : Performing Objects

Uri McMillan

Published in print: 2012-04-23

The introduction begins with a brief discussion of Lorraine O’Grady’s Mlle Bourgeoise Noire to discuss the risks and rewards of becoming the subject and object of art. It delineates the three key concepts undergirding Embodied Avatars—black performance art, objecthood, and avatar production—and their relationship to the book’s focus on black women performers and artists from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

This chapter analyses the resurgence of the jazz avant‐garde in New York in the mid‐1960s, focusing in particular upon musicians' negotiation of competing aesthetic, social, and economic imperatives. ...
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This chapter analyses the resurgence of the jazz avant‐garde in New York in the mid‐1960s, focusing in particular upon musicians' negotiation of competing aesthetic, social, and economic imperatives. Through a detailed investigation of shifting patterns of reception in the jazz press, attention is drawn to a complex of factors that lifted the jazz avant‐garde from near obscurity in the early years of the decade, to a canonised status by 1965. Prominent amongst these factors was the politically radical discourse promoted by figures associated with the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, which conceived black avant‐garde musicians as shaping the spiritual foundation for revolutionary change. The articulation of a radical social purpose thus assisted the process of canonisation, although this canonisation brought no parallel economic success.Less

After the October Revolution : The Jazz Avant‐garde in New York, 1964–65

Bernard Gendron

Published in print: 2009-04-01

This chapter analyses the resurgence of the jazz avant‐garde in New York in the mid‐1960s, focusing in particular upon musicians' negotiation of competing aesthetic, social, and economic imperatives. Through a detailed investigation of shifting patterns of reception in the jazz press, attention is drawn to a complex of factors that lifted the jazz avant‐garde from near obscurity in the early years of the decade, to a canonised status by 1965. Prominent amongst these factors was the politically radical discourse promoted by figures associated with the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, which conceived black avant‐garde musicians as shaping the spiritual foundation for revolutionary change. The articulation of a radical social purpose thus assisted the process of canonisation, although this canonisation brought no parallel economic success.

This chapter examines a range of Baraka's writings (poems, plays, and essays) from 1960 to 1979, during which time he changed from being a Beat‐affiliated writer (named LeRoi Jones) to a Black ...
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This chapter examines a range of Baraka's writings (poems, plays, and essays) from 1960 to 1979, during which time he changed from being a Beat‐affiliated writer (named LeRoi Jones) to a Black Cultural‐Nationalist, then a Pan‐Afrikanist, and finally a Third‐World Socialist. The opening discussion is of how Baraka in poetry collections like Black Magic (1969) and It's Nation Time (1970) developed a Black Arts potentialism that contrasts with Ginsberg's. Various plays that Baraka wrote in the 1960s are also examined—notably, A Black Mass (1966), Slave Ship (1967), and Great Goodness of Life: A Coon Show (1967). Drawing on Howard University's Amiri Baraka Archive (which includes FBI reports on his plays and speeches), the chapter presents new scholarship on his drama and his cultural activism with groups like the Republic of New Afrika. After examining how Baraka's potentialism reaches a spiritual apogee with his poetry collection Spirit Reach (1972), the concluding discussion contrasts such spiritualism with the didacticism of his Third‐World Socialist writings such as the poetry volume Hard Facts (1975).Less

‘This Black World of Purest Possibility’

LeRoi JonesAmiri Baraka

Published in print: 2011-12-01

This chapter examines a range of Baraka's writings (poems, plays, and essays) from 1960 to 1979, during which time he changed from being a Beat‐affiliated writer (named LeRoi Jones) to a Black Cultural‐Nationalist, then a Pan‐Afrikanist, and finally a Third‐World Socialist. The opening discussion is of how Baraka in poetry collections like Black Magic (1969) and It's Nation Time (1970) developed a Black Arts potentialism that contrasts with Ginsberg's. Various plays that Baraka wrote in the 1960s are also examined—notably, A Black Mass (1966), Slave Ship (1967), and Great Goodness of Life: A Coon Show (1967). Drawing on Howard University's Amiri Baraka Archive (which includes FBI reports on his plays and speeches), the chapter presents new scholarship on his drama and his cultural activism with groups like the Republic of New Afrika. After examining how Baraka's potentialism reaches a spiritual apogee with his poetry collection Spirit Reach (1972), the concluding discussion contrasts such spiritualism with the didacticism of his Third‐World Socialist writings such as the poetry volume Hard Facts (1975).

Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth examines the process of building ‘America’ out of partly African materials. Incest becomes a sign for the forced amalgamation of cultures that characterized ...
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Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth examines the process of building ‘America’ out of partly African materials. Incest becomes a sign for the forced amalgamation of cultures that characterized plantation slavery, and the oedipal tropes of knowledge, parentage, desire, and narrative are made newly relevant by the particular racialized history of the United States. The politics of the Greek drama, whereby the hero is pitted against the community, are also interrogated by the various choices made by figures such as Augustus, the chorus and the conspirators. The issue of oedipally competing traditions is scrutinised via African-American tropes such as Esu, the talking book, and the tragic mulatto/a. Also examined is the cultural position of the dramatist herself, as a black woman writer and a member of the generation immediately after the Black Arts Movement.Less

Oedipus Rebound: Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth

Barbara GoffMichael Simpson

Published in print: 2007-12-01

Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth examines the process of building ‘America’ out of partly African materials. Incest becomes a sign for the forced amalgamation of cultures that characterized plantation slavery, and the oedipal tropes of knowledge, parentage, desire, and narrative are made newly relevant by the particular racialized history of the United States. The politics of the Greek drama, whereby the hero is pitted against the community, are also interrogated by the various choices made by figures such as Augustus, the chorus and the conspirators. The issue of oedipally competing traditions is scrutinised via African-American tropes such as Esu, the talking book, and the tragic mulatto/a. Also examined is the cultural position of the dramatist herself, as a black woman writer and a member of the generation immediately after the Black Arts Movement.

This chapter demonstrates how modernism was a connective space that answered the need to nurture interracial relations in a situation marked by the forcible separation of things for the sake of ...
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This chapter demonstrates how modernism was a connective space that answered the need to nurture interracial relations in a situation marked by the forcible separation of things for the sake of separation itself. It discusses how the conceptual coherency secured for Black Art during the late 1960s and into the 1970s depended to a large degree on a parallel effort to banish black modernists from the cultural landscape. It identifies the period with the dematerialization of art—meaning, among other things, the polemical reconceptualization of art-making as cultural production, that ostensibly more engaged type of practice that “politicized” the art world at this time. It also details the rise of the “Black Art expert”.Less

How It Looks to Be a Problem

Darby English

Published in print: 2016-12-20

This chapter demonstrates how modernism was a connective space that answered the need to nurture interracial relations in a situation marked by the forcible separation of things for the sake of separation itself. It discusses how the conceptual coherency secured for Black Art during the late 1960s and into the 1970s depended to a large degree on a parallel effort to banish black modernists from the cultural landscape. It identifies the period with the dematerialization of art—meaning, among other things, the polemical reconceptualization of art-making as cultural production, that ostensibly more engaged type of practice that “politicized” the art world at this time. It also details the rise of the “Black Art expert”.

This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. ...
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This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. The book charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As the book shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black Nationalist discourses. The book studies how this emerging subjectivity, termed aesthetic radicalism, critiqued nationalist rhetoric in the past. It also continues to offer novel means for expressing black intimacy and embodiment via experimental works of art and innovative artistic methods. A bold addition to an advancing field, this book rewrites recent black cultural production even as it uncovers unexpected ways of locating black radicalism.Less

Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism

GerShun Avilez

Published in print: 2016-04-15

This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. The book charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As the book shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black Nationalist discourses. The book studies how this emerging subjectivity, termed aesthetic radicalism, critiqued nationalist rhetoric in the past. It also continues to offer novel means for expressing black intimacy and embodiment via experimental works of art and innovative artistic methods. A bold addition to an advancing field, this book rewrites recent black cultural production even as it uncovers unexpected ways of locating black radicalism.

A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological ...
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A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological foundations for what would be perpetuated as the Black Art Movement (BAM). Though there has arisen an increasing amount of scholarship that recognizes leading women artists, activists, and leaders of this period, these new perspectives have yet to recognize adequately the ways women aspired to far more than a mere dismantling of male-oriented ideals. This book examines the work of several women artists working in Chicago, a key focal point for the energy and production of the movement. Angela Jackson, Johari Amiri, and Carolyn Rodgers reflect in their writing specific cultural, local, and regional insights, and demonstrate the capaciousness of Black Art rather than its constraints. Expanding from these three writers, the book analyzes the breadth of women’s writing in the BAM. In doing so, it argues that these and other women attained advantageous and unique positions to represent the potential of the BAM aesthetic, even if their experiences and artistic perspectives were informed by both social conventions and constraints. This book’s examination brings forward a powerful contribution to the aesthetics and history of a movement that still inspires.Less

Visionary Women Writers of Chicago's Black Arts Movement

Carmen L. Phelps

Published in print: 2012-11-26

A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological foundations for what would be perpetuated as the Black Art Movement (BAM). Though there has arisen an increasing amount of scholarship that recognizes leading women artists, activists, and leaders of this period, these new perspectives have yet to recognize adequately the ways women aspired to far more than a mere dismantling of male-oriented ideals. This book examines the work of several women artists working in Chicago, a key focal point for the energy and production of the movement. Angela Jackson, Johari Amiri, and Carolyn Rodgers reflect in their writing specific cultural, local, and regional insights, and demonstrate the capaciousness of Black Art rather than its constraints. Expanding from these three writers, the book analyzes the breadth of women’s writing in the BAM. In doing so, it argues that these and other women attained advantageous and unique positions to represent the potential of the BAM aesthetic, even if their experiences and artistic perspectives were informed by both social conventions and constraints. This book’s examination brings forward a powerful contribution to the aesthetics and history of a movement that still inspires.

This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity ...
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This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.Less

Black Liberation Theology, Black Power, and the Black Arts Movement at Trinity United Church of Christ

Kymberly N. Pinder

Published in print: 2016-02-15

This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.

This chapter discusses the contributions of female artists, activists, and intellectuals from the Black Arts Movement (BAM) to the expansion of black aesthetic. The BAM fulfilled its ideological aims ...
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This chapter discusses the contributions of female artists, activists, and intellectuals from the Black Arts Movement (BAM) to the expansion of black aesthetic. The BAM fulfilled its ideological aims through numerous artistic, activist, and intellectual, collaborations from its key participants and its very own critics. This chapter points out that BAM’s female artists such as Johari Amini, Carolyn Rodgers, and Angela Jackson, not only promoted the black American female perspective but also showed a degree of commitment to an inclusive concept of Black Art.Less

The Black Arts Movement : Let Me Count the Ways

Carmen L. Phelps

Published in print: 2012-11-26

This chapter discusses the contributions of female artists, activists, and intellectuals from the Black Arts Movement (BAM) to the expansion of black aesthetic. The BAM fulfilled its ideological aims through numerous artistic, activist, and intellectual, collaborations from its key participants and its very own critics. This chapter points out that BAM’s female artists such as Johari Amini, Carolyn Rodgers, and Angela Jackson, not only promoted the black American female perspective but also showed a degree of commitment to an inclusive concept of Black Art.

This chapter explores how the agenda of the Black Arts movement (BAM) was shaped by and paradoxically instituted by a collaboration of competing and contradicting factors. Black American artists, ...
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This chapter explores how the agenda of the Black Arts movement (BAM) was shaped by and paradoxically instituted by a collaboration of competing and contradicting factors. Black American artists, activists, and intellectuals, identified themselves as “Black Artists,” many of them favored a socially progressive agenda for obtaining cultural empowerment for black communities. Black resistance to white American domination has always been pacifist, militarist, or a combination of the two, a contradiction that proved to be essential in the formation of BAM ideals of diversity.Less

Dysfunctional Functionality : Collaboration at Its Best in the Black Arts Era

Carmen L. Phelps

Published in print: 2012-11-26

This chapter explores how the agenda of the Black Arts movement (BAM) was shaped by and paradoxically instituted by a collaboration of competing and contradicting factors. Black American artists, activists, and intellectuals, identified themselves as “Black Artists,” many of them favored a socially progressive agenda for obtaining cultural empowerment for black communities. Black resistance to white American domination has always been pacifist, militarist, or a combination of the two, a contradiction that proved to be essential in the formation of BAM ideals of diversity.

This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of ...
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This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). However, OBAC’s aesthetic was inspired by its own unique, culturally specific objectives through the artistic and entrepreneurial collaborations among important figures and institutions that aimed to support the artistic and progressive culture in Chicago. OBAC’s agenda was influenced by the broader national movement, and its participants collaborated with BAM artists in other cities such as New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia.Less

Women Writing Kinship in Chicago’s Black Arts Movement

Carmen L. Phelps

Published in print: 2012-11-26

This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). However, OBAC’s aesthetic was inspired by its own unique, culturally specific objectives through the artistic and entrepreneurial collaborations among important figures and institutions that aimed to support the artistic and progressive culture in Chicago. OBAC’s agenda was influenced by the broader national movement, and its participants collaborated with BAM artists in other cities such as New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia.

Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s ...
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Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of 21st century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic. Black Post-Blackness argues that the full innovativeness of the BAM only emerges when we recognize the movement’s full anticipation of the “beyond black art” waves of 21st century black aesthetics. The BAM has much more in common with 21st century African American literature and visual art than we often realize. The push to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and sheer experimentation in 21st century African American literature and visual art is often framed as a push away from the narrowness of the category “black art” but it is, often, a push back to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and experimentation in the BAM.Less

Margo Natalie Crawford

Published in print: 2017-05-01

Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of 21st century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic. Black Post-Blackness argues that the full innovativeness of the BAM only emerges when we recognize the movement’s full anticipation of the “beyond black art” waves of 21st century black aesthetics. The BAM has much more in common with 21st century African American literature and visual art than we often realize. The push to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and sheer experimentation in 21st century African American literature and visual art is often framed as a push away from the narrowness of the category “black art” but it is, often, a push back to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and experimentation in the BAM.

This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two ...
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This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two writers developed distinct versions of participatory art. Like much of Baraka’s Beat-period work, The System of Dante’s Hell thematizes his dissatisfaction with the white counterculture and desire to create art that could connect him with black urban audiences. However, the novel draws on the counterculture’s essentialist conception of lower-class culture in ways that would continue to shape Baraka’s cultural nationalist output of the late 1960s. In contrast, Brooks’s In the Mecca rejects the immersive drama that defines Baraka’s Black Arts. Inspired by her Community Action Program–sponsored work with Chicago’s Blackstone Rangers, the collection insists that minority poets use the resources of poetic form to achieve a calibrated distance from their lower-class subjects.Less

Black Arts and the Great Society

Stephen Schryer

Published in print: 2018-06-05

This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two writers developed distinct versions of participatory art. Like much of Baraka’s Beat-period work, The System of Dante’s Hell thematizes his dissatisfaction with the white counterculture and desire to create art that could connect him with black urban audiences. However, the novel draws on the counterculture’s essentialist conception of lower-class culture in ways that would continue to shape Baraka’s cultural nationalist output of the late 1960s. In contrast, Brooks’s In the Mecca rejects the immersive drama that defines Baraka’s Black Arts. Inspired by her Community Action Program–sponsored work with Chicago’s Blackstone Rangers, the collection insists that minority poets use the resources of poetic form to achieve a calibrated distance from their lower-class subjects.

This chapter explores the character of Johari Amini’s poetic works. Amini’s first published collection of poetic works, Images in Black (1967), served as a critique of images, iconography, and visual ...
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This chapter explores the character of Johari Amini’s poetic works. Amini’s first published collection of poetic works, Images in Black (1967), served as a critique of images, iconography, and visual references that commonly viewed aesthetic conventions that defined black culture and identity. Amini’s poetry projected the preeminent community and nation building goals that embodied the goals of the Black Arts Movement.Less

Carmen L. Phelps

Published in print: 2012-11-26

This chapter explores the character of Johari Amini’s poetic works. Amini’s first published collection of poetic works, Images in Black (1967), served as a critique of images, iconography, and visual references that commonly viewed aesthetic conventions that defined black culture and identity. Amini’s poetry projected the preeminent community and nation building goals that embodied the goals of the Black Arts Movement.

This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept ...
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This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept of Black Art was not a “fixed” one, but rather, something that varies and changes its form, function, and meaning with each piece of work produced by African American artists. In her first poetic works, Rodgers pointed out that the goal of defining the role of the Black Arts writer continued to be an essential preoccupation for self-acclaimed Black Arts Movement participants, as the movement wanted writers to position themselves within unwavering spaces of political expression and cultural representation.Less

Muddying Clear Waters : Carolyn Rodgers’s Black Art

Carmen L. Phelps

Published in print: 2012-11-26

This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept of Black Art was not a “fixed” one, but rather, something that varies and changes its form, function, and meaning with each piece of work produced by African American artists. In her first poetic works, Rodgers pointed out that the goal of defining the role of the Black Arts writer continued to be an essential preoccupation for self-acclaimed Black Arts Movement participants, as the movement wanted writers to position themselves within unwavering spaces of political expression and cultural representation.

Beginning with the first Negro Writers’ Conference, which featured a keynote address by Lorraine Hansberry, and then James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, this chapter tracks the transition from the ...
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Beginning with the first Negro Writers’ Conference, which featured a keynote address by Lorraine Hansberry, and then James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, this chapter tracks the transition from the ethos of racial catholicity of the 1940s and 1950s to the nationalist sentiments that came to define the Black Arts during the 1960s. As Horace Caton observed at the conference, black writers were preoccupied with the emergence of postcolonial African nations and their implications for the civil rights movement in the United States. Together these developments fomented an international racial (and religious) consciousness, and worked to both frustrate and inspire a nascent movement of black artists and intellectuals just a few years later. In this regard, James Baldwin’s book illustrated the connections between the black aesthetic, Christianity, and a critique of colonialism even as it anticipated the rise of Black Power. All were essential elements in the social analysis and spiritual diagnosis that shaped the Black Arts of the 1960s on much broader terms.Less

An International Spirit

Josef Sorett

Published in print: 2016-09-01

Beginning with the first Negro Writers’ Conference, which featured a keynote address by Lorraine Hansberry, and then James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, this chapter tracks the transition from the ethos of racial catholicity of the 1940s and 1950s to the nationalist sentiments that came to define the Black Arts during the 1960s. As Horace Caton observed at the conference, black writers were preoccupied with the emergence of postcolonial African nations and their implications for the civil rights movement in the United States. Together these developments fomented an international racial (and religious) consciousness, and worked to both frustrate and inspire a nascent movement of black artists and intellectuals just a few years later. In this regard, James Baldwin’s book illustrated the connections between the black aesthetic, Christianity, and a critique of colonialism even as it anticipated the rise of Black Power. All were essential elements in the social analysis and spiritual diagnosis that shaped the Black Arts of the 1960s on much broader terms.

Melvin Dixon’s 1991 novel Vanishing Rooms is widely regarded as a gay novel, but it intersects in specific ways with African American liberation struggles. First, it uses the queer doubling ...
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Melvin Dixon’s 1991 novel Vanishing Rooms is widely regarded as a gay novel, but it intersects in specific ways with African American liberation struggles. First, it uses the queer doubling convention that W. E. B. Du Bois proposed in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and earlier works to represent homoerotic desire between a feminized African American male and a reckless, masculine white male as the basis for interracial nation-building. Women, in this convention, cement the bonds of men with men that feminist and queer theorists contend are the basis of patriarchy. Second, the novel bears the unequivocal stamp of the Black Arts Movement through its use of two icons, Nina Simone and the Nation of Islam. While ending patriarchy remains a challenge, the novel brilliantly calls into question an exclusive focus on gay liberation that does not address the specificity of black experience.Less

Charles Nero

Published in print: 2014-01-15

Melvin Dixon’s 1991 novel Vanishing Rooms is widely regarded as a gay novel, but it intersects in specific ways with African American liberation struggles. First, it uses the queer doubling convention that W. E. B. Du Bois proposed in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and earlier works to represent homoerotic desire between a feminized African American male and a reckless, masculine white male as the basis for interracial nation-building. Women, in this convention, cement the bonds of men with men that feminist and queer theorists contend are the basis of patriarchy. Second, the novel bears the unequivocal stamp of the Black Arts Movement through its use of two icons, Nina Simone and the Nation of Islam. While ending patriarchy remains a challenge, the novel brilliantly calls into question an exclusive focus on gay liberation that does not address the specificity of black experience.

This chapter examines the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s and uses the notion of “black post-blackness” as a way to understand the continuity between the BAM and twenty-first-century ...
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This chapter examines the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s and uses the notion of “black post-blackness” as a way to understand the continuity between the BAM and twenty-first-century African American aesthetics. It challenges the claims of post-black advocates about the lack of room for experimentation, abstraction, and play in 1960s and 1970s black aesthetics. During this time, it argues that black aesthetics was a domain for improvisation, abstraction, and performance in ways that get ignored by proponents of post-blackness who want to see the concept as a wholly new and unique thing. It also explains how the BAM pivoted on a dialectic between collective mirrors and collective collages that layered and gave blackness depth; this depth was a spatial and temporal strategy of resistance that insisted on blackness as the past, present, and future. Finally, it asserts that black aesthetics’ time of entanglement is what the post-black performances erase.Less

“What Was Is” : The Time and Space of Entanglement Erased by Post-Blackness

Margo Natalie Crawford

Published in print: 2015-02-03

This chapter examines the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s and uses the notion of “black post-blackness” as a way to understand the continuity between the BAM and twenty-first-century African American aesthetics. It challenges the claims of post-black advocates about the lack of room for experimentation, abstraction, and play in 1960s and 1970s black aesthetics. During this time, it argues that black aesthetics was a domain for improvisation, abstraction, and performance in ways that get ignored by proponents of post-blackness who want to see the concept as a wholly new and unique thing. It also explains how the BAM pivoted on a dialectic between collective mirrors and collective collages that layered and gave blackness depth; this depth was a spatial and temporal strategy of resistance that insisted on blackness as the past, present, and future. Finally, it asserts that black aesthetics’ time of entanglement is what the post-black performances erase.